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University Graduates: One Woman Hired for every Four Men

Women – not men – were fired in droves at the start of the 2008 financial crisis. But was that as outrageously sexist as it sounds?

After all, they were the bulk of irregular workers back then, when Korea had a greater percentage of them than any other OECD country. Insecurity was a given, which is why the status and rights of irregular workers was a big political issue years before the crisis.

Considering this, mere economic rationales of why women have again been treated so differently – badly – by employers in the latest financial crisis should be treated with a great deal of suspicion. In particular, they can’t explain why Korean companies are currently hiring roughly only one female graduate for every four male ones, as the following MK article makes clear:

The goal of one Ms. Lee (25), member of the graduating class of an upper-mid-level Seoul university, is to get a job in finance. Starting last July, she did a two-month internship at a branch of a securities company, where her superb evaluations caused her to be considered the top choice to be given a permanent position. However, she was unsuccessful.

A few days later, Ms. Lee even heard these shocking words from her superior: “I’m sorry, but we got instructions from headquarters to only hire men, so there’s nothing I could do.” Ms. Lee revealed, “Though at each branch, the ranked interns’ marks were much higher for women, at that time there was not a single woman among those hired as permanent employees. I think my dream was crushed for no other reason than that I’m a woman, and it’s not fair.” (source, right)

Amid severe unemployment, female university students at the threshold of getting jobs are being frustrated and shedding tears. Through women’s increased high levels of education, “female wind” is blowing [female influence is making an impact] everywhere, but it has been confirmed that, in the job market, sexual discrimination in favor of male applicants is serious.

On Oct. 31, the results of an investigation by the Maeil Kyungjae newspaper into the gender ratios of new university graduates hired by 10 major domestic companies last year found that women made up 1 or 2 of every 10 hires. They averaged the percentages of new female employees and found it was 18.5%, not even 20%.

Broken down by company, Lotte Group was the highest at 27.5%, LG and SK were at 20%, GS was at 18%, and Hanhwa was at 17.1%. Hyundai Kia Motors was in the high teens, and Hyundai Heavy Industries had the lowest percentage of women among the recent university graduates they hired, at 9.7%.

Female college students looking for employment often appear in the corporate image advertisements of Doosan Group, which is gaining popularity among current university students, but it has become known that the ratio of female new employees at this company, at 18.8%, is very low. A Doosan official said, “The nature of this business is [requires] an overwhelmingly high percentage of men and so a pretty low ratio of women.” Hanjin limited the range [of information] made public to some subsidiaries like Korean Air, and Samsung refused to release any information.

According to the National Statistical Office, the number of female university graduates last year, at 271,773, outstripped that of male graduates (268,223) for the first time in 10 years. However, the number of female graduates who were unemployed was 142,000, the highest on record.

In the end, it is being noted that there is a lack of arrangements for institutional groundwork from which businesses can actively hire talented women. Experts have emphasized that businesses need to take notice of strengths that only women possess, like delicacy, softness, thoughtfulness, and communicative ability and so change their perceptions at the level of corporate strategy. Kim Wang-bae, a sociology professor at Yonsei University, explained, “As we become a post-industrial society, ‘software society,’ which represents delicacy, is becoming emphasized over ‘hardware society,’ which symbolizes masculinity. Because businesses that excel at capturing consumer demands survive, it is necessary to maximize the strengths of female personnel.” (end)

As always, news like this strongly challenges narratives of a glorious future of Korean grrrl power that pervade the English language media about Korea (see here for a discussion of the above video for instance). But I confess that I was still shocked at the figures above, although perhaps I shouldn’t have been when even an implicit advocate of women’s rights like Professor Kim Wang-bae above subscribes to the same delicate women / tough men worldview that Doosan Group does!

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14 thoughts on “University Graduates: One Woman Hired for every Four Men”

That last paragraph of the article is so depressing, and one can get a pretty good feel for the problem just from that same paragraph. I just find it really sad.

I also wonder if perhaps women aren’t angry enough about this. I think you may have mentioned something about this before, but with the way the media reports suggesting things have changed dramatically and that it’s now a much better place to be a woman and so on, combined with the fact that most people tend to overestimate equality within their own society until after it changes (and with there still having been no feminist revolution of any kind in Korea) perhaps too many Koreans don’t really how bad their own situation actually is. After all, on the surface it might seem to be considerably changed for the better from how it was in their parents generation even. There’s music and fashion and foreign foods to be consumed, there are some (as an older female coworker recently said to my girlfriend when she was jobhunting) “really good companies out there where the upper people bring the female staff gifts back when they go on business trips”. Has the reality sunk in yet to the extent that it might, is what I’m wondering.

Ugh, this last bit made me nauseus: In the end, it is being noted that there is a lack of arrangements for institutional groundwork from which businesses can actively hire talented women. Experts have emphasized that businesses need to take notice of strengths that only women possess, like delicacy, softness, thoughtfulness, and communicative ability and so change their perceptions at the level of corporate strategy. Kim Wang-bae, a sociology professor at Yonsei University, explained, “As we become a post-industrial society, ‘software society,’ which represents delicacy, is becoming emphasized over ‘hardware society,’ which symbolizes masculinity. Because businesses that excel at capturing consumer demands survive, it is necessary to maximize the strengths of female personnel.”

Way to hit us with a bunch of crappy stereotypes, again! Yes, only women can be delicate, soft, thoughtful and communicative! Who can blame heavy industries corporate branches (where I’m sure everyone at 과장 level and up regularly engages in backbreaking labor that requires real *man*power) for not yet realizing how our innate delicacy can help?

Agreed to all of the above comments of course! One thing to add is that it was disappointing but not surprising that Samsung wouldn’t divulge its own recruitment figures; while Chairperson Lee Kun-hee has publicly committed to achieving greater gender equality in Samsung’s ranks, I’ve yet to hear of any actual concrete steps taken towards doing so. Transparency about Samsung’s current recruitment ratio would have been a good place to start.

My reaction to employment issues is undoubtedly colored by the greater attention I’ve usually paid to gay rights, imported brides, and mixed families (sexuality and family stuff), and I’m pretty sure I find evopsych reasoning a bit more compelling than most of the commenters here, but…

I can’t help but think that sexual revolution is a necessary precursor to employment equity. The default pattern in societies is for women’s average ranking of attractive features in a male partner to give much higher priority to the ability to quickly increase her own station, when compared with men’s ranking of desirable features in a woman. Some people believe that this is basically the result of a historical kind of oppression, of myths taught to boys and girls from the cradle. I don’t deny that this plays a role, but there is more reason to believe that this is a pernicious aspect of our nature, like revenge or jealousy or hypocrisy, which requires strong social institutions to hold it in check.

The elements of sexual revolution in advanced societies — widespread sex free from reproduction, explorational sexuality, non-pecuniary passionate romance, and especially the open discussion of sexual needs with one’s partner — strike me as crucial to employment issues, because these are among the most important things that have the potential to rerank men in desirability away from salary and social class. Without such a change, of course men are going to cling like a life preserver to their main asset in finding a mate.

Now, I’m not saying that institutional reforms or regulations are in any way wrong…just that I doubt their ability to “stick” unless the things that tend to impress women about men and the things that men tend to do to attract women are considerably diversified…brought into the 21st century.

I don’t doubt that things are far more difficult for women in many industries could the stats also be affected by the fact that many uni graduates don’t really want careers and graduate largely to have an academic pedigree suitable to their families’ reputation and future groom’s status?

Perhaps it’s worth pointing out that the 10 firms above employ only a tiny fraction of the country’s workers. SMEs and the public sector provide well over 90 percent of the jobs in Korea. It’s my impression that most people would generally rather not work for SMEs in Korea, but a lot of women might provide public sector work, partly because so many (graduate) jobs at places like SK, Hanjin, Hyundai Heavy etc. are essentially blue collar or engineering based (I’m assuming Korea has the usual high male:female ratio of graduates in these sectors). Another reason is that they often get better conditions, particularly with maternity leave and so on. I’ve heard this is one of the things KEB staff are jumpy about, in that they have had pretty good conditions on maternity under Lone Star and are worried that might change.
I assume the 142,000 is for recent graduates. I wonder how many of those are studying for professional/civil service exams.

Not sure about that. Actually the statistic in the main post is meaningful because these are jobs that people want (civil service and public sector professions too). As other bloggers have pointed out, if you don’t get into a big company during their big hiring sessions for junior employees, you probably won’t get in at all. SMEs offer few prospects and little job security, partly because of the behavior of the larger firms. Worse, it makes it harder to get the job you actually want. Unfortunately, most jobs are in the SME sector (about 85%).

What I was saying was that you can’t take the figure and apply it across the board.

That women are doing (relatively) well now could just be an indication that they are more willing to settle, perhaps because they assume they won’t be the breadwinner long-term anyway. Also the main statistical change is falling male employment . Female employment hasn’t meaningfully risen.

Quoting the same stats above, I saw this article today on the Chosun Ilbo site. I wonder which jobs they’re considering in the numbers. They don’t break it out or cite sources, so I’m guessing it’s service sector and other jobs.

Just a quick note to say thanks to everyone for their comments, and sorry for not responding: I’m flat out with an emergency editing job at work. But I’ll try to consider them all properly and catch up at the weekend.